I think a lot of the concern is that these kids aren't out of that phase yet.
The part I'm not digging, is they seem a bit young to be taking over the Treasury Dept, or any department. It seems like this would have been better done by an Accounting Audit Firm, not hackers.
Hackers are just trying to get in, get data. An accounting audit would be more about finding impropriety.
So, it seems on the surface like 'finding waste' is not the goal.
Finding waste is pretty easy. As we're seeing already, cutting the waste is harder than it looks:
- The Congressional Budget Office recently found that Congress provided $516 billion in appropriations this fiscal year to programs that had expired under federal law.
- Federal government agencies are using just 12% of the space in their headquarters buildings on average, according to the Public Buildings Reform Board, which is an independent federal agency focused on recommending the disposal of underutilized federal properties.
- The House Oversight Committee spent $3.3 billion on furniture over the past few years.
- The federal government made $247 billion worth of payment errors in fiscal year 2022 and $236 billion in 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.
These errors, also known as improper payments, include overpayments or payments that should not have been made, such as to someone who died or someone no longer eligible for government programs.
Estimates show the federal government spent $2.7 trillion in payment errors since 2003.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/government-waste-inef...
Also, by the dates you supplied, it looks like Biden/Democrats were already successfully in-progress of cutting costs.
Every large organization needs reviews/audits to find waste. I think the problem with the 'right' is the idea that because there is waste, we should abolish government. But, every organization accumulates waste, and then needs to have a review process to make corrections. The whole burn it all down is pretty immature take on leadership.
He was never charged for these activities, let alone overcharged.
What you say is often true and was even more often true in the past. If it was your experience, I'm sorry to hear it.
A friend of mine, one of the more brilliant people I've met, told me that her parents built her brother a workshop because "a boy needs a workshop". When she said she needed a workshop too, she was told she didn't. My sister had similar experiences. At the time, this was taken to be obvious.
Things have changed since then, but not completely, and not at the same rate everywhere.
And yes, I'm sure there are exceptions. Nothing wrong with that. And nothing wrong with men and women having different interests.
I'm sorry for what happened to your sister and friend. That was unfair.
I was personally told that plane kids club is boys only. And like, it took courage to ask in the first place, because I did felt I will stick out. And I have seen boys being pushed into technical clubs whether they want it or not. None of that has anything to do with expectations on responsibility or how mistakes are treated.
This is a tangent and maybe a long shot, but if you don't know Beryl Markham's "West With the Night", you might be in for a treat.
In reply to yours, boys doing stupid things are called out for being stupid. They aren't praised for doing things that could blow their hands off or burn the house down. The only ones impressed are their peers.
They just do it anyway, and try to conceal it.
I mean, this is not true and I have seen that both online and in reality. It is literally in peoples comments. Even in the comment I responded to you dont see them go "this was stupid" and moving to cut the occasion out. If whatever op did was not approved, he simply would not had access to materials. You can prevent a kid from doing dangerous things with "electricity, chemistry, firecrackers and rockets" easily - you just refuse to buy firecrackers if they refuse to deal with them responsibly. And parents frequently do - including boys parents.
The fathers comment was affirming, the irresponsible act is not a proof you would be dumb, it is proof you are right kind of a boy.
I've never heard of a parent encouraging their boy to play with fire or explosives. My dad went to great lengths to try to stop me from that. I even built a flamethrower once (he didn't know about that!). Weirdly, my interest in such things evaporated when I was 16 or so, and have had no interest in it since. Maybe it was because I got my hands on a Mustang!!
I once acquired several vacuum tube TVs from a repair shop. I had a lot of fun tinkering with them until my mom got rid of them, as she was sure I would be electrocuted. I shocked myself a few times which is funny in retrospect but not at the time.
My dad taught me how to use tools, but only under close supervision until he was sure I wasn't going to stab myself in the eye.
I concealed a lot from my parents and the authorities. I didn't have any illusions I'd be celebrated for that stuff.
People may celebrate it in comments when the danger is long past, sure. But that's something different.
HAhahahaha, you have nooo idea!
My dad's great disappointment in me was I hated baseball in all its forms.
My obsessive interest in electricity, chemistry, firecrackers, and rockets was what led me to study engineering at Caltech. My fellow students there were the same type of boy as me. If I was beginning my career today, I'd be sleeping on the doorstep of SpaceX until they hired me.
I've never met a single man who took a car apart just to see how it worked, not even my father who worked as a generator mechanic and later a car mechanic.
Nor one younger than said father (mid-50s) who built circuits for fun -- and he's the only one!
Nor one who filled trash bags with hydrogen gas.
Nor one who even used model airplanes in any format. Nor one who flew drones, either.
And so on, and so on.
I'm sure there are rare exceptions, like you, who've done everything you've personally done. I'd honestly love to see a video or photo of some cars you've fully disassembled; I do maintenance on my volkswagen, and even just changing out the timing belt was quite time consuming!
But seriously, what's the point of your comment? Even separate from if there is some implicit and totally comprehensive difference of interests, I can't discern its relevance to the posts you replied to, especially not in context of stories that sum up to something like "yeah, i did try, and I got socially rejected at multiple stages of early development."
For one woman in my family tree, her father explicitly give his daughter workshop skills because he viewed it as important skills to have, something she was very happy to receive and has continued to use through her 60 and ongoing life.
A other woman in this tree decided early in life that her primary goal in life was to find a husband and raise children. She did it, and later when the children became independent, the husband requested that she went and got a job, which resulted in her getting a depression since she absolutely did not want to do that.
Two other anecdotes, in what would be equivalent to US middle/high school, my school let the students choose between woodwork and needlework. The result was ~30 girls + exactly 1 guy in needlework, and ~30 guys + exactly 1 girl in woodwork. Similar events happened at my next school when choosing between physiology and film study, with every student being of the same gender except for one (me personally being that odd one in that case).
I do not see this changing. As the gender equality paradox illustrate, the tendency for stereotypical gender roles and cultural enforcement of gender roles tend to get stronger with more gender equality. At best we might have had a reduction in negative reinforcement.
If someone wants to talk about boys, it's fair for others to talk about girls. The reply (to me at least) seemed motivated by personal feeling and personal experience rather than ideological battle, so I thought the flags were unfair. People should be free to exchange their personal feelings and experiences here, as long as they don't attack others.
What is fair or not fair thankfully not up to me. I am fairly colored by my personal experience, especially with one family member that seemingly blended their view of gender roles with their self identity, and an other who seemingly feels the whole deal to be very restrictive and was greatly helped by a parent who choose to go outside the normal expectations in that regard. To me that makes the ideological battle feel like both sides are quite wrong. People generally also describe it as old people that enforces gender roles while young people are trying to escape it, which is also completely opposite in my personal experience.
If I could wish for something in this kind of discussion, it would be the minimization of generalizations. Comments like all girls get treated like X, or all boys get treated like Y, only seem to be simplifications that aim to put a lid on anyone with a different personal experience.
At the same time, to share personal experience directly can make one vulnerable, so adding a layer of indirection is understandable.
I then wondered what would happen if I plugged it into the wall socket.
It buzzed violently for a few seconds and then burst into flames. I learned what AC current was that day.
I think I was 8 at the time.
Yes, I have been shocked by 110VAC many times. (It's the basis of my superpowers.)
IMO intent matters, if they access a bank DB as a skill test (and disclose the hack to the bank) that's fine.
If they're taking a hospital offline for giggles they should get a record.
But in infosec a lot of people probably got into it because 'hacking' is cool and glorified by the media. It's rebellious and appeals to a lot of teens I think. I don't think it's as serious as Krebs suggested that you could be extorted or compromised. It seems like it's just a bunch of inexperienced people in a discord channel. Soliciting a DDoS on there, to me, just seems like youthful nonsense. If you were actually in some kind of criminal hacking enterprise I bet you would know not to make mistakes like leaving a paper trail to your identity in a discord channel where you solicited a crime.
I haven't seen the people with criminal records for cyber crimes be less trustworthy in the industry. Some of them just made stupid mistakes when they were younger and sometimes dumb kids get way overcharged for cyber crimes. For the most part I think it's fine for kids to go through a phase where they think it's cool but they don't really know what they are doing. A lot of people have done that. A lot of 13 yr old kids on the internet have talked about hacking banks and things like that and they aren't all going to be in a gang. Another analogy is how a lot of people get into chemistry because they like blowing things up. Not all those people are terrorists.